{"id":780257,"date":"2026-07-05T09:03:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T09:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/780257\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T09:03:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T09:03:16","slug":"liberal-frontbencher-dan-tehan-says-coalition-with-one-nation-not-even-being-talked-about-liberal-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/780257\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberal frontbencher Dan Tehan says coalition with One Nation \u2018not even being talked about\u2019 | Liberal party"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liberal frontbencher Dan Tehan says he does not want to be in a rightwing coalition with One Nation<\/a>, despite senior colleagues urging closer ties with Pauline Hanson and polls suggesting her rise will make it difficult for the opposition party to ever govern in its own right again.<\/p>\n

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, on Sunday mocked the Liberal, National and One Nation parties as an \u201caxis of grievance\u201d on the conservative side of politics, but Tehan said a formal alliance was not being discussed among his colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not want to be part of a coalition with One Nation. We want to be part of a coalition with the Liberal party<\/a> and the National party,\u201d he told ABC\u2019s Insiders on Sunday.<\/p>\n

While a formal coalition-style arrangement is not being publicly discussed, splits are emerging in the Liberals and Nationals about whether to fight One Nation or seek closer ties or a loose cooperation.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n

Frontbencher Andrew Hastie has vowed \u201cwar\u201d on Hanson\u2019s party<\/a>, while others such as junior shadow minister Tony Pasin have suggested a seat-sharing arrangement<\/a>. Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie suggested she would \u201ccome and help [Hanson] campaign\u201d<\/a> in Labor-held seats and the former prime minister and now Liberal party president, Tony Abbott, has backed preference deals with One Nation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One Nation\u2019s primary vote has been polling in the high 20s or low 30s in recent published opinion polls, neck-and-neck with Labor, while the Coalition polls in the high teens or low 20s. Last week\u2019s Guardian Essential poll<\/a> found Labor on a primary vote of 30%, One Nation on 26% and the Coalition on 23%.<\/p>\n

Polling experts have suggested the splitting of the conservative vote between One Nation and the Coalition<\/a> would make it highly difficult for the Liberals and Nationals to re-enter government on their own, especially when combined with expectations One Nation could pick up a swag of seats at the next election, mostly at the expense of Coalition MPs.<\/p>\n

Tehan was asked on Insiders about what the Coalition needed to do in order to arrest its polling slide. He said the Coalition would continue criticising Labor for going back on its promises not to change negative gearing or capital gains tax arrangements, but host David Speers pressed him on whether an alliance with One Nation was necessary.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I want to be part of is a Liberal party and a National party that in coalition runs this country again,\u201d Tehan said, claiming a coalition-style arrangement with One Nation was \u201cnot even being talked about\u201d.<\/p>\n

Pressed several times for a clear answer, Tehan responded: \u201cWe\u2019re not entertaining or discussing or being part of a coalition with One Nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abbott, in a contentious speech to the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship summit in London last week, claimed \u201cmass migration\u201d \u2013 a phrase rejected by some Liberal moderates<\/a> \u2013 was being pursued \u201cto dilute and eventually to extinguish the Anglo-Celtic core culture and the Judaeo-Christian foundational ethos\u201d.<\/p>\n

But despite Abbott\u2019s position as Liberal party president, Tehan said it was the Coalition\u2019s partyroom \u2013 not its executive \u2013 which would set the party\u2019s policies, including migration. Tehan said he hadn\u2019t heard Abbott\u2019s speech until shortly before the program, but that Abbott \u201crespects\u201d party processes, appearing to distance himself from Abbott\u2019s remarks.<\/p>\n

\u201cAngus Taylor, in his budget-in-reply speech, set the foundations of where we want to go. And, in particular, making sure that we have our migration levels in line with the amount of houses that are built in this nation so that we can rebalance our migration policy, we can rebalance to make sure that we are looking after Australians first,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, there are people who have a lot of views about this. But it is the partyroom which always has and always will set the policy agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n

Albanese spoke to the NSW Labor conference<\/a> on Sunday, mocking the ructions on the right of politics.<\/p>\n

Referring to Liberal frontbencher Melissa McIntosh\u2019s calls for a \u201crebrand\u201d<\/a> of the opposition, Albanese said: \u201cThe problem is not their brand \u2013 it is their product. It is not their sales pitch \u2013 it is their policies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the race to the bottom that all three rightwing parties are caught up in. They are the axis of grievance. Each trying to be more anti-fairness, more anti-worker, more anti-aspiration,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is why, for all the shifts in the landscape over the years, the fundamental contrast in Australian politics<\/a> remains the same. Our opponents only ever define themselves by who and what they are against.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Liberal frontbencher Dan Tehan says he does not want to be in a rightwing coalition with One Nation,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":780258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-780257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}